The Daily Startup: Investors Expect Biotech IPO Slowdown to Continue

After several strong years for biotechnology initial public offerings, investors see a narrower window for these offerings in 2016, including because of uncertainty stemming from the presidential election, Brian Gormley reports for Dow Jones VentureWire. Venture capitalists who have invested in biotechnology companies are looking ahead to 2016 with some concern after a slowdown in 2015.

While 2015 was good--the 34 IPOs is the fourth-highest yearly biotech total on record—the pace of offerings was slower from the start. In the first six months of last year, 20 biotech companies held IPOs, down from 34 in the same period of 2014.

Dibs Technology Inc. has raised $1 million in seed funding to bring dynamic pricing technology to the fitness industry. Dibs’ seed round was led by Gree Ventures, the investing arm of the mobile games company, and joined by Comcast Ventures, Catalyst Fund, Caerus, Dreamit Ventures and individual investors.

Scholar Rock, a biotechnology company, has raised $36 million in a funding round led by Fidelity Management and Research Co. Other investors in the Series B round include new investor Cormorant Asset Management and existing investors ARCH Venture Partners, EcoR1 Capital, Polaris Partners, Kraft Group and Timothy Springer.

HealthQuest Capital, a firm originally sponsored by Sofinnova Ventures but now independent, looks to raise up to $175 million for its second fund, according to a regulatory filing. It hadn’t closed on any capital for HealthQuest Partners II LP as of Thursday.

BionX Medical Technologies Inc.has raised $17 million in Series E funding for its bionic prosthetic devices. ZGC Shiner Investment led the round.

(VentureWire is a daily newsletter with comprehensive analysis of all the investments, deals and personnel moves involving startups and their venture backers. For a two-week trial, visit http://on.wsj.com/DJPEVCNews, scroll to the bottom and click “try for free.”)

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Tech Startups Face Fresh Valuation Pressure in 2016. Highly valued technology startups could face tougher private fundraising conditions in 2016, making it more difficult than in 2015 to avoid an initial public offering if they need to raise capital, The Wall Street Journal's Telis Demos reports. And after a year in which a number of technology and Internet companies failed to reach their private valuations in IPOs, the reception of new tech IPOs could be chilly on Wall Street.